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What is a voxel, and what is a block?
The whole world, from hills to cave walls, is built of voxels of 25 cm. A block is a 1 m cube made of 4 × 4 × 4 voxels, and you can place and break at both scales. Raw matter (stone, dirt, planks…) stacks by 64 blocks, which is 4,096 voxels; ready-made shapes such as stairs stack by 64 pieces.
How do I place raw matter?
- 1
Take some matter
Put stone, dirt, planks, glass… in your hotbar and select it.
- 2
Aim at a face
Point at the side of a voxel, a block or the ground.
- 3
Right-click
One voxel of 25 cm appears against that face. It never goes where voxels already are. That is how you fill a gap no shape fits or sculpt a rock.
How do I break things, and with which tool?
| Tool | Left-click takes | Best matter |
|---|---|---|
| Hand, chisel, any other item | One voxel | Anything, slowly |
| Pickaxe | The aimed 1 m cube, one material only | Rock, ores, ice |
| Shovel | The aimed 1 m cube, one material only | Soil, grass, sand, gravel, snow |
| Shears | The aimed 1 m cube, one material only | Leaves, seaweed, mushrooms |
| Axe | The same cube, with a rough overshoot on its sides | Wood |
Tools come in wood, stone, iron and titanium (shears only in iron and titanium). The tier sets speed and durability, and a worn-out tool disappears. Outside its matter a tool is slow: a wooden pickaxe needs 7.5 s for a cube of leaves, a shovel 6 s for a cube of rock.
How does the placement grid work?
A shape (a prefab, see Shapes) is placed against the face you aim at, aligned on the 1 m grid along that face. Aim at another shape and the new one goes in the neighbouring cell. It faces the way you look. Before you click, a faint preview shows the exact voxels it will take:
- Normal: the spot is clear.
- Orange: part of the spot is taken. Crouch with Shift and the shape is placed on its empty voxels only.
- Red: impossible here.
- Breaking: standing, a placed shape breaks in one go and comes back whole; crouched, it breaks voxel by voxel so you can trim it.
Which materials, and survival or creative?
- Materials: shapes exist in every solid full-cube matter: rocks (stone, granite, marble…), bricks, concrete, glass, metal and the planks of each wood (oak, birch, redwood). Ores, leaves, liquids and light sources take none. A log gives planks of its own wood (16 voxels of log make 32 of planks).
- Survival: every voxel and shape you place leaves your stack. Breaking gives back exactly what you break, never more.
- Creative: nothing is spent and the catalogue holds every material and shape, family by family. F5 switches between the two; the middle mouse button picks the aimed piece.
Questions
How many voxels are in a block?
64: a block is 1 m wide and a voxel 25 cm, so 4 × 4 × 4.
Why does my pickaxe remove a whole cube?
Pickaxe, shovel and shears take the aligned 1 m cube you aim at, but only its aimed material. Use the hand or the chisel to take a single voxel.
Can I place half a block?
Yes: raw matter goes one voxel at a time, and slabs and half slabs are ready-made halves. See Shapes.
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